Hard Drive Filling Up -- Help!
melanie
Posts: 795
in The Commons
I'm downloading and installing all my DAZ content into my new computer and all of a sudden my 1 terabyte hard drive is almost completely full. I'm installing my content into my external Drive F, not my Drive C internal hard drive, but it's filling up anyway. What am I doing wrong? This never happened in my old computers. I would appreciate any help to fix this.
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You're not doing anything wrong. I've been having the same battle for space as too many of these 3D programs collect gbs of content files. The solution is to collect external harddrives. One for the Modeler and a bunch of resources to use in the modeler [I've got a copy of 3D Coat] and another harddrive [4Tb] just for all of D/S' working content :-) [It's half full - have been collecting for a few years now. It was required to enable installing products from this sale lol ... ] And then I have another external harddrive [actually more than one but who's counting] for storing backup folders.
Recommended external harddrives are the kind that have their own power supply. Remember to ALWAYS use the "safely remove" feature on Windows BEFORE disconnecting the drive(s). In case of doubt, turn off the computer, unplug the external drive(s) and then turn back on the computer. [Some of the other programs like Winzip tend to hold onto something in the drives well beyond their time of usage for reasons I don't know about, so closing the computer deals with those situations].
n.b. be careful that the actual download location has room for whatever is being downloaded ;-)
You'll need to give us more info. Are you installing through Install Manager, manually, or by some other method? Are downloads to Drive C deleted after installation to Drive F? I suspect you're either installing things twice or unintentionally making backup files on Drive C without realizing it.
You might need a bigger external drive. Maybe 4TB. Here's a recent review.
where is your installation of daz [studio]? and are you using DAZ central to install them?
if the answer to your second question is yes, and the answer to the first is C drive.
daz central wil install content to your daz [Studio] installation.
i have a 512GB for my system and other programs. Daz is a dedicated 1TB m.2 drive and its got 300GB of space left.
so tell us more.
One other consideration, is whether you set up DIM to keep or delete installation files. While it's convenient to keep the installation files, they do take as much as 75% to 100% of the space that the actually installed files require. So, having a 900MB installation file usually results in the installed product itself requiring somewhere between 900MB and 1200MB. Which totals to 1800MB to 2100MB of disk space.
How to solve this? Well, there are all kinds of options:
-Have DIM automatically delete installation files. However, if you ever need to re-install a product, this means you'll also have to download it again.
-Backup the installation files to CD, DVD or another harddisk, then delete them manually from the DIM Installation Packages folder (somewhere on your harddisk)\InstallManager\Downloads
Even then, disk space requirements can rack up fast, especially during PC+ Sales. I just ordered an 8TB external HDD myself because of this.
Something that may take a lot of time, but might help a little as well, is going through all your installed products, and checking whether you installed multiple versions of the same product. It took me several hours, but I found a ton of products for which I installed both Daz and Poser versions. So, I uninstalled all the Poser versions, unless the Daz version was noticably smaller (usually, these were tagged as dsCF or studioCF or something like that, and were only kilobytes in size instead of many megabytes). These poser versions then showed back up in my downloadable content list in DIM, where I selected them, right-clicked, and selected "Hide All Selected". If ever some product does need some poser files after all, I can always unhide them and re-install them. But, this did free up a considerable amount of disk space.
The install files don't take up as much space as I thought - I've downloaded everything now and my 18.000+ products only take up about 1.75 TB. But of course a lot of it is older content where file sizes are smaller.
Okay, so I think I win the 2020 Blonde Airhead Award! I was poking around in my new computer and I looked in the Disk Management area and realized that I never noticed that this computer is partitioned. My previous computers were not. Drive C is a boot disk and has only 119GB whereas Drive D is the data disk and has the terabyte on it. So, now, can anyone tell me if there's an easy way to move things I've installed over to the D drive or do I need to uninstall everything I've installed (DAZ Studio, DIM, Photoshop, Affinity, etc.) and reinstall everything. Or should I just reformat the computer and start fresh? I don't remember the installers giving me an option as to where to install things. I just didn't pay attention to that. I appreciate any advice.
By the way, I do have an external drive where all my DAZ content goes to, and DIM defaults to Drive C, so I need to tell it to go to Drive D, which I'll switch in DIM.
Thanks!
One more questions: How do I tell DIM to delete the zip files? I can't find anywhere in it to do this.
You can have more than one Daz library. I've currently got two, each on a different drive. DIM is good at dealing with this. I have set the installation location to my new drive and new stuff gets installed there. DIM keeps track of where stuff is installed and when it does an update it does it in the library where that item is installed. You can also move stuff to a different library by de-installing it in DIM and re-installing it. This puts it in the library you have set for downloads but it does make DIM re-download the installer from Daz.
I think you can just move files from one library to another. I've done that with no problems, Studio doesn't seem to mind if some files for an item are moved to a different library. I don't know if this affects Smart Content since I never use it but it doesn't cause any problems with custom catergories.
I have all my DAZ content already on my external drive to save space on the computer, and I have DIM telling everything to go there. I've been doing that for quite a long time now. This partitioned hard drive in my new computer threw me off. Now I have software like Photoshop Elements, DAZ Studio, DIM, Affinity Photo, even my McAfee all installed on the smaller C drive, which I don't want. I just didn't know if it would be easier to reformat my computer back to factory defaults and just start over.
Personally I'd start over, to avoid any complications with registry entries not being removed when uninstalling, etc..
I posted a while back about this very thing. I had no idea why my hard-drive kept filling up. This is where you tell DIM to stop doing it.
You have two options:
1 Stop buying stuff.
2 Buy a bigger hard drive for your stuff
3 Or some combination of both.
So that's maybe three options.
It's good you're not using C drive; if you need to re-install windows (or preferably recover from a backup of disk image), then you won't have to re-download again.
Note: You do do backups right?
One more way to save up some space for those of us who only use Daz Studio and not Poser, etc. is to check the non-Daz Studio files in the DIM and hide them. I plan to go through my installed products and prune those files, as I only realized this after having installed a lot of (for me) useless ballast.
I also found where to change my default drive to D rather than C, so that will help a lot. Why don't they just make that drive the default at the factory? I saw on the internet that a lot of people have had the same problem, not knowing that Drive C was the smaller one. I'll just fix the drives in DIM so things target the right drives.
Thanks for all the help. This is a great community!
does that delete the zip files?
Not everybody has multiple drive/partitions. The only drive that's guaranteed is C
Thank you! That's a great help!
I don't know if anybody's mentioned this, but if you buy a 4TB drive to hold your stuff, you really need to buy two 4TB drives.
One for backup. Of course you can continue to use your old drive but it's usually smaller than your new drive so you end up with multiple fragmented copies of your backups, and complicating retreival. Not having a backup is like climbing onto the end of a dead tree limb and hoping it doesn't break, dropping you into the bottomless canyon below. The phrase "all your eggs in one basket" comes to mind.
Personally, I manually download all the zip files of each new model and software app that I buy and archive them on a drive separate from my active library. I also keep a duplicate backup of both my archive data and my active library. In order to keep from having to copy the entire drive each time I update, I keep my downloads organized by year. Once a year has been completed I never have to copy it again. If you buy a lot, then you might want to use a shorter archive period. When I go looking for an archived copy of a model I can usually remember about how long ago I downloaded it, so I know which drive to start looking on.
What program do you use to create backups or do you just make a mirror copy of your files?
If you're asking me, then my archive of the model and app zips on an external drive, as is the duplicate. I manually copy the new zips to each drive as I download them. However, I don't have the luxury of having enough huge drives, so some of my archive are split onto smaller drives by year(s). On the other hand, my active library is kept on an internal drive, separate from my system "C:/" drive and is maintained by standard Windows backup to yet another internal drive*, separately from my normal system backup, only when I add new content to my active library (i.e. I run a separate Win7 style "backup" session for it as necessary).
I know I could probably streamline the operation a bit with a 3rd party professional backup application. But what I have, works for me and I'm an old dog for whom new tricks are uninspiring. I also have a pile of older smaller hard drives squirreled away with older fragments of my archive and library contents. Paranoia has been my friend in some instances.
*Note: Internally my DAZ machine has two 1TB NVMe M.2 SSDs, two 1TB SATA SSDs, and two 2TB hard drives. Externally it has a 1TB and a 4TB USB3 hard drive. And across my local LAN, hosted on my old machine, I keep one copy of my DAZ archive along with 5 other external drives for various purposes. Keeping notes of what's on which drive at any time is paramount.
I use EaseUS free version, which backs up daily. I also periodically (about every 10 days), manually copy the Daz folders to an alternative drive; I keep a couple before deleting.
I have a disk image of my complete installation before I started using it, so it's ready in case I mess up Windows, as sometimes I just cba using a virtual copy when messing in the Registry, although that is rare when I throw caution to the wind.
No, you have to find the file they are stored in and delete manually. This just prevents it from happening again if you don't want it to.
There is a lot of 'useless balast' in my runtime as well. It would be nice if DIM would give you the option of saving different kinds of files to different locations. Kind of like a preset for Studio, Files needed for Studio go in one location. Files if you use Poser go to another. You set your Studio Directory, then set others for Poser, Carrara, etc. The files for each go to their own dirrectory.
The other thing is Documentation. Is it really needed in the Runtime? With the advent of SSDs, keeping the working dirrectory compact is a good thing. Things that don't need to be loaded into the program do not need the speed of an SSD and just take up space. If you move them yourself, you lose DIM's update feature.
This might not help the OP but, it is along the same line. I like the idea of moving the DIM download dirrectory. My content dirrectories are probably going to hit at least 2TB when I download my latest acquisitions from the PC+ sale.
Gus